February 2007

.......... and we've a lot of interesting and thought provoking responses to consider over the coming weeks / months.

Full responses, analysis and conclusions will be published on the National Statistics website in due course.  If you responded to the consultation and provided your current e-mail address with your response, we will let you know when this material is available.

As I mentioned in my last post, there is a geography seminar being arranged at the Royal Statistical Society on the 3rd May.  I hope to see some of you at this seminar, although I will actually no longer be working for ONS.  The ONS view is likely to be presented by Alistair Calder and Pete Benton.

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in this blog and sent back their responses to the consultation.  If you haven't replied yet, this is the final week to let us know your thoughts.

Please do carry on adding to the debate on this site this week.  There are several discussion threads that I have not commented on myself.  You might want to add to these, or to comment on something new, such as:

• whether SOAs should be named;
• whether Business (or Workplace) OAs would be a useful development in city centres;
• the relative importance of social homogeneity, population size range, or area shape in the design of OAs;
• whether there are any clear and unambiguous benefits to be gained from redrawing OAs and SOAs;
• what you use OAs and SOAs for, and why that might mean it's important that they remain as stable as possible.

We are now starting to analyse your responses and will continue to do so over the next two to three months.  Analysis will be presented on the main National Statistics website.  Keith Dugmore and David Martin are also putting together a geography seminar for the 3rd May at the RSS.